ED RUSCHA (B. 1937) – Standard Station, Ten-Cent Western Being Torn in Half sold for $68.2 million
Led by record-breaking Magritte and Ruscha masterpieces, Christie’s 20th/21st Century art week in New York achieved $486 million on night one. Magritte’s L’empire des lumières became the most valuable work of Surrealist art ever sold at auction. Seven records were set across Mica: The Collection of Mica Ertegun Part I and the 20th Century evening sale. Together they totalled $485,922,600, selling 83 per cent by lot, 92 per cent by value, and 120% hammer and premium against low estimate. The top lot – René Magritte’s L’empire des lumières – made $121,160,000, a world-record price for a Surrealist work at auction. Seven records were set, including artist records for Magritte, Ed Ruscha, Christian Schad, Susan Rothenberg and Amedee Ozenfant. Magritte and Roy Lichtenstein also set records for works on paper. There were bidders from around the world and 1.25 million viewers watched the sales across Christie’s global platform.
David Hockney’s Still Life on a Glass Table (1971) made $19,040,000. The painting was made after the end of his romance with Peter Schlesinger and is a tribute to the beauty, pain and fragility of love. Its nine objects — many associated with Schlesinger — are rendered with crystalline intimacy producing a dynamic work which was in major retrospectives including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (1988) and the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (2017).
DAVID HOCKNEY – Still Life on a glass table (1971) sold for $19,040,000